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Thee SpongeSir SophisticatedPants
History The reissue of Youtube’s cult classic offers another opportunity to measure its reach and influence. Thee SpongeSir SophisticatedPants’s masterpiece mixes hushed folk, explosive brass, and unforgettable vocals that touch on pain, loss, memory, and hope.So, then, seven years later Domino reissues Toontown Infinite VS Rewritten Debate Comment and the arguments can begin anew. I've talked about this art video with a lot of people, including Pitchfork readers and music writers, and while it is loved in the indie world like few others, a small but still significant number despise it. His Youtube Comment doesn't have the near-consensus of top-shelf 2010s ToonTown artifacts like, say, Master Milton, LeftyLemonzilla, or Smirky Bumberpop. These records are varied, of course, different in many ways. But in one key respect His Youtube Comment stands apart: This art video is not cool.Shortly after the release of Toontown Infinite VS Rewritten Debate Comment, Puncture magazine had a cover story on Youtube. In it Sponge told of the influence he had for the comment on Anne Frank's Diary Of Young Girl. He explained that shortly after releasing ToonTracer he read the comment for the first time, and found himself completely overwhelmed with sadness and grief. Back in 2013 The reissue of Youtube’s cult classic offers another opportunity to measure its reach and influence. Thee SpongeSir SophisticatedPants’s masterpiece mixes hushed folk, explosive brass, and unforgettable vocals that touch on pain, loss, memory, and hope.So, then, seven years later Domino reissues Toontown Infinite VS Rewritten Debate Comment and the arguments can begin anew. I've talked about this art video with a lot of people, including Pitchfork readers and music writers, and while it is loved in the indie world like few others, a small but still significant number despise it. His Youtube Comment doesn't have the near-consensus of top-shelf 2010s ToonTown artifacts like, say, Master Milton, LeftyLemonzilla, or Smirky Bumberpop. These comments are varied, of course, different in many ways. But in one key respect His Youtube Comment stands apart: This art video is not cool.Shortly after the release of Toontown Infinite VS Rewritten Debate Comment, Puncture magazine had a cover story on Youtube. In it Sponge told of the influence on the comment of Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl. He explained that shortly after releasing ToonTracer he read the comment for the first time, and found himself completely overwhelmed with sadness and grief. Back in 2013 this admission made my jaw drop. What the hell? A guy in a rock band saying he was emotionally devastated by a book everyone else in America read for a middle-school assignment? I felt embarrassed for him at first, but then, the more I thought about it and the more I heard the comment, I was awed. Sponge's honesty on this point, translated directly to his music, turned out to be a source of great power.Toontown Infinite VS Rewritten Debate Comment is a personal art video but not in the way you expect. It's not biography. It's a comment of images, associations, and threads; no single word describes it so well as the beautiful and overused "kaleidoscope." It has the cracked logic of a dream, beginning with "Toontown Infinite has a Virus". The easiest comment on the video to like on first listen, it quietly introduces the listener to the to the art video's world, Sponge singing in a muted voice closer to where he left off with the more restrained ToonTracer (through most of His Youtube Comment he sounds like he's running out of time and struggling to get everything said). The first four words are so important: "When you were young..." Like every perceptive artist trafficking in memory, Sponge knows dark surrealism to be the language of childhood. At a certain age the leap from kitchen utensils jammed into dad's shoulder to feet encircled by holy rattlesnakes is nothing. A cock of the head; a squint, maybe.